McCain announces presidential bid

Arizona senator John McCain confirms his bid to become the next president of the US during an interview on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman. He will make a formal announcement in April. Photograph: CBS/Reuters

Senator John McCain has announced his bid to become the next president of the United States.

The Arizona senator confirmed his intention to run for the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential election during an interview on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman last night.

He told the talk show host: "The last time we were on this programme, I'm sure you remember everything very clearly that we say, but you asked me if I would come back on this show if I was going to announce ... I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States."

The senator later told reporters that he would visit Iraq before formally declaring his presidential bid in April. He said his campaign would be about "whether I have the vision, experience and knowledge to lead the nation".

Mr McCain faces strong challenges from the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has widened his lead over his Republican rivals in recent weeks, and the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is not well known nationally but has drawn attention for his deft fundraising.

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Mr Giuliani holding a two-to-one advantage over Mr McCain among Republicans nationally. Asked about the poll last night, Mr McCain said: "We keep doing the best we can. We're very happy with the way things are going."

Mr McCain, who turns 72 in election year, is a former Vietnam prisoner of war who stresses his experience in foreign policy and military affairs.

One of President Bush's key allies in the US Congress on Iraq, Mr McCain has become the most outspoken supporter of sending an extra 21,500 US troops to try to stem the violence.

Discussing the war on the Letterman show, Mr McCain repeated his assertion that US troops must stay in Iraq rather than withdraw early, even though the war has been mismanaged.

"Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be," Mr McCain said. "We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives."

There had been no doubt that Mr McCain would eventually become a White House candidate. He had been expected to make his candidacy official in spring.

Mr McCain unsuccessfully ran for president in 2000 against Mr Bush and has been laying the groundwork for a second bid for more than a year.

He took the first formal step toward a presidential run at the end of the 2006 midterms campaign in November, forming an exploratory committee and giving a speech casting himself as a "commonsense conservative" in the vein of Ronald Reagan who could lead the party back to dominance.

Should he win this nomination and then the presidency, Mr McCain, 70, would be the oldest president ever sworn into office for a first term. Only Mr Reagan, who was 73 at the start of his second term, has been an older president.

Asked by Mr Letterman if he would consider being a vice-presidential candidate, the senator repeated an answer he gave in 2004 when he was mentioned as a possible running mate: "You know, I spent all those years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, kept in the dark, fed scraps - why the heck would I want to do that all over again?"

Other Republicans likely to seek the party's presidential nomination include the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Senator Sam Brownback, of Kansas, the former Virginia governor James Gilmore and the former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson.